nerd times

Sometimes I find it hard to remember I'm in my thirties. Today I had a late lunch at El Chilito with an old high school friend I hadn't seen in at least five years. Playing catch-up is always sort of weird to me, for how much I tend to overshare and expect others to know, and even stranger when I realize later I've just hung out with someone I'm not related to but have known literally half my life. It was the same dynamic we had in high school, but thankfully tempered with age and distance; comparing notes on who we're keeping up with, how small the world is (he works in VA with another alum's fiancee's sister, but the couple lives in CO), how we're different from who we were. I found it startling how many of these math and science kids ended up in film production, of all things.

breaking news!

Facebook usage has spiraled out of control, so I'm taking another week-long vacation from touching it. It's sort of maddening though, because I've begun to think in status updates. "Chewtastic has done six loads of laundry today and read two books." "Chewtastic apparently now only crushes on guys who wear dress kilts unironically." Gah.

Stuff, with a capital S

Recently, I've (probably annoyingly) begun saying "Stuff!", flinging my arms out broadly, instead of reexplaining each time that what I mean is a ridiculously positive turnabout in my perception of life. Stuff! is the ineffable, the swath of possibilities and first and second and third chances, the opportunity to try something new and get it wrong, the perceived flattening of obstacles previously intimidatingly insurmountable, the rerecognition that the only reason to desire immortality is for the sake of eternal omniscience and joy, that there's just not enough time unless you fire up the will.

What does this mean? I'm in a disturbingly perpetual good mood, and my cigarette boat of newfound hope and overexcitability will do its damnedest to drag you all kneeboarding along in its wake, coughing and spitting as you twist on the tow rope.

Yes, I'm cautiously happy.

erm

there's always something awful and poignant and cheesy and heartbreaking, all at the same time, when you end something; the emotionally polar opposite of what you both held in your hands and your hearts in the thick of it, the being with someone for the foreseeable future, past the horizon of belief. there's no going back, no revisiting, no reliving. the irrevocable moment has passed, and things can not ever be the same. the word, the look, the argument. you can still love someone and hope and believe in them, want them to be the best they can be and still shower encouragement on them, but you don't have to be a part of it any more; and that's a relief, no matter how much empathy you have for their struggle. it's a hard heart that can do that. a hard, hard heart.